Network backup solution on Mac OSX

[kwmarc]

Currently, i have a G5 serving up our domain/fileserver for our windows network. It is attached to an Xserve raid box and that holds the data for the file server. We have a spare fibre channel card lying around and i wanted to stick it in the other slot of the Xserve and load up the other 4 drive slots with harddrives and essentially create a small SAN. Currently, we use retrospect backup software to do our backups of everything on the network, but when a machine dies and we have to restore anything it really sucks. We get errors and most of the time is doesnt work at all. I want to create a centralized backup solution off of the newly created Xserve RAID SAN. I want to know what is the best peice of software for mac's that will pull backups off of any machine store to the Xserve, and then be easily restore if a disaster strikes.

-kyle

 

[kwmarc]

Also, anyone have any information on norton ghost? I want to know if ghost has a server or a capability to back up to an external source over the network. It does no good if the machine goes down and all of the ghost images are stored on the hard drive. I am thinking ghost would be a good and easy option to solve the problem of backing up users entire computer, but only if it can be stored then on the mac file server or somewhere else. Thanks

 

[Nasty_Savage]

you back up every machine on the network? That's ridiculous. We use retrospect as well with our Mac servers, works great. Backing up individual machines over the network is a waste of time though. Your best bet is to lock down the workstations, and force them to save their information to the server itself. Then have a firewire tape drive back up the xserve.

Keep the home folders on a seperate drive in case your operating system blows up.

Create a standard image for your workstation models so that restoring a borked workstation only takes a few minutes, rather then a few hours.

Take back control of individuals workstations and FORCE them to adhere to IT standards set by the IT department, using policies and madatory profiles, etc.. Sounds to me as if you are attempting to get a home run hit from a one stop solution. This IMO is always a bad idea. Better to go the 'Divide and Conquer' route. We have an individual tape drive and copy of Retrospect or Veritas on every server we use. Network backups blow and are ultimately self defeating.

** Edit - and you can run Ghost off a server partition and store the images on the server itself. Combined with a tape backup = win.

*** Edit2 - you mentioned an external raid box, is it an x-raid? Or another brand? Depending on the size of the array, you may not be able to find a back up solution that has enough drive capacity for a tape backup and may need to look for something more industrial...like a tape backup array. Raid itself is good for storage with redundancy and mirroring, but unless a backup can restore an individual file from a certain date depending on your tape rotation, its not really a backup at all IMO. One thing that I really love about Novell Netware is the network restore option built into the client. Don't even have to dig out the tape if someone accidentallly deletes a file and catches it within a reasonable amount of time.

 

[kwmarc]

We dont backup every machine persay, what i meant was we back up the mail server (all of the users mail), and their profiles that are stuck on the G5. Currently we have many different small backups that run and i want to consolidate backups to a SAN off of our Xserve RAID. Also, the reason i threw in norton ghost was because i have used it before for home use and it takes minutes to full restore a machine when it dies, and i was wondering if they had a server solution for that which could hold every machines image on the server and when a machine dies, pull that image off of the server and over to the new machine. I did find the solution to that though.

 

[Nasty_Savage]

oh, i was confuzzled...sorry. I am not overly into the whole SAN arena. I still think individual backups on seperate servers with a good tape rotation and off site rotation is the best policy. JMO.